Rambling Josh

This past weekend I was fortunate enough to take part in a 90th birthday celebration for Doc Stevens. There was a large crowd of well-wishers in attendance, a testament to the many lives Doc has touched over the years.

Last week I was thinking about Doc, and his many contributions to the community of Lignite, and a song began to take shape. When a song begins to take shape one never knows how much effort will be required to get its final form to reveal itself. This one wrote itself.

I had planned on giving the song to Doc sometime before or sometime after his party, but my Uncle Tim had other plans, and not so subtly told me during the party to get my guitar and shut up and sing. Tim’s a good uncle, and a nephew should always listen to a good uncle. I owe him that much for my brothers and I destroying his toys and peace and quiet when we were growing up.

The song’s title is “Doc”, and if you want to strum along the chords are G, D, and C. Thanks for everything Doc, and thank you to his family for putting together a wonderful celebration. A worthwhile hangover indeed.

“Doc”

90-years young they say
Old isn’t old if you don’t see it that way
A renaissance man in Lignite you’ll find
Isn’t much that Doc hasn’t given a try

Built Friday night lights for the football team
Lit up the night so us small town boys could dream
You can find his mark all over this place
Rutabagas for Halloween just to see the look on your face

Chorus:
Welding steel, bending iron
Making wine and beer for all to try
Quilts and mittens for that North Dakota wind
Lignite is home because of people like him

Lost the love of his life a few years back
Some welds break, I suppose life is like that
But he’s got his kids and he’s showed them the way
A torch in the night that refuses to fade away

90-years young that’s what they say
Old isn’t old if you don’t see it that way
A renaissance man in Lignite you’ll find
Isn’t much that Doc hasn’t given a try

Chorus:
Welding steel, bending iron
Making wine and beer for all to try
Quilts and mittens for that North Dakota wind
Lignite is home because of people like him
Lignite is home because of people like him

She woke him at around five in the morning, and said, “We have water in our basement.” He stirred slightly, as a slight stir is generally all he’s capable of at that particular time of the day, and somewhat consciously mustered, “Hmm”, and drifted back to a mostly unconscious state, rationalizing that it surely can’t be that much water.

Rationalizing towards the best case scenario is the default mode when one isn’t ready to be pulled away from their preferred allotment of shuteye.

The mostly unconscious state he had managed to rationalize himself back into was soon interrupted by what sounded a bit like furniture being moved about in the basement. Not so much “moved”, but the halting push, pull, and drag sound objects make when one person is struggling to move more than what one person should be moving.

We are faced with choices of varying magnitude and significance throughout our waking hours each and every day of our mostly upright, mostly breathing existence. Some choices we can choose to not choose a choice. Without our assent they flitter by and drift into the abys of choices not chosen, sometimes never to be seen nor heard from again, but often times not.

The wisdom we gain from the act of living life often informs us as to the choices we should heed and those not in need of our attention, immediate or otherwise. Whether we listen to the wisdom life is laying before us is another matter.

The life wisdom one gains from being married for 23-years informed him that ignoring those halting sounds of struggle would not be wise, and this was a choice in need of his immediate assent.

The earlier settled upon drowsy rationalization that there “surely can’t be that much water” quickly subsided as he stepped from the last basement step onto the basement carpet. The carpet squished beneath his foot, and that squishy indentation soon filled with enough water to cover his foot. With rationalization dead in the water, he uttered a string of words that made the sailor adrift on the ottoman blush.

As you’ve most likely surmised, the “she” and “he” of this tale of the babbling Berber brook is my wife and I. We had plans to spend our 23rd wedding anniversary lounging unrepentantly at our cabin in Montana. We had plans. We had a dry basement. We had dry carpet in our dry basement. We had dry sheetrock in our dry basement. Plans change. So it goes.

Surprisingly, wet carpet is heavier than dry carpet, and much like an intoxicated college roommate, not very helpful in getting itself up a flight of steps. The whole “life wisdom” deal soon had me cutting the carpet into smaller and smaller pieces, as the steps seemed to get steeper and my legs seemed to get stubbier.

Note that I don’t recommend using these same measures with the previously mentioned intoxicated college roommate…most of the time.

It’s been a very wet spring here in the Black Hills, so our basement isn’t the only one that failed to stem the seepage of groundwater. It is the only one that we’ve had to spend large portions of our time and energy attending to, so it is one too many.

I’m well aware that it could be worse, most everything could be, but we had plans.

Each summer I try and immerse myself in the process of increasing my understanding about a particular area of interest and curiosity. As one in possession of (or possessed by) an obsessive brain, a brain that generally hinges on an “all-in” or “all-out” approach to most everything, dedicating specific timeframes to specific things seems to have always been the way of it.

To fellow full-immersion folks, sometimes it’s best to float your boat in what you’ve been given, and resign yourself to the ebb and flow of the currents it produces. Maybe not full resignation, but a somewhat purposeful heading toward the general direction of your curiosities and interests. During that somewhat purposeful drift, also try and maintain the ability to recognize when enough is enough. Often easier said than done.

For instance, and completely hypothetical, recognize that even though eggs are good for you, that eating six a day, every day, until you find yourself repulsed by the thought of an egg is full-immersion gone beyond the “enough is enough” boundary. Or, take heed if someone (hypothetically your wife) suggests that gray suede wingtips are lovely, but four pairs of the exact same pair of them might be enough. As I said, “completely hypothetical”.

Why are some particular things of more interest than other particular things to particular people? Our curiosities are curious.

The cinnamon rolls I made a few weeks ago were of particular interest to me because the memories they evoked are particular to a place, a time, and a person. A person that’s gone now, a place that lingers, and a time that is accessible only to me. So it goes.

To anyone not knowing that place, that time, or that person, those rolls are just rolls. Just some flour, some cinnamon, some butter. But, they are something more. My grandma Rose’s tried and tested recipe are a taste of pure love, the taste of a life well lived.

For whatever reason it’s been several years since I’ve made those rolls, but for whatever reason, it felt like time to give them another go. It felt like time to say “thank you”, time to say “we’ve got this”, time to maybe say “goodbye” a little bit more than I’ve allowed myself. Mostly, I felt like sharing all this with my family, just as she had shared with all of us.

These particular things, tie us to particular people, to particular places, to particular times. We’re all they’ve got. We have the power to give the finitude of their being a bit more time. Perhaps when we give their being a bit more time, when we share their love, their recipes, with those we care for, then we in turn give ourselves a bit more time? Isn’t that what we all want?

As the Roman Stoic philosopher, Seneca The Younger, once said, “Life is long, if you know how to use it.” Spending your time attending to things that bore you to tears, and do nothing to stir interest and curiosity in you, can also make time ease by painfully slow. I don’t think that’s what he meant, but it’s probably what some of Seneca’s fellow Roman’s felt like when he was philosophizing in the bathhouse while trying to get wine stains out of his toga.

Seneca The Younger? Not from this angle.

Life is all about how you look at it, and it looks even better with a tray of Grandma’s cinnamon rolls cooling on the kitchen counter.

Happy Mother’s Day to thee who have gone boldly forward and fully accepted their fate amongst the royal order of the motherly persuasion. Boldly, blindly, delusionally…whatever your state of mind, body, and spirit was when you leaned into being a mom, we thank you. It’s been over 25-years since I took human anatomy in college, but I believe it still stands true, that without you there would be no us.

I suppose that’s one thing all of us have in common. Nine months or so of a muffled front row seat to the world surrounding the womb of the woman that bore us. Once that grand exit is made it’s a crapshoot as to how the story will play out for each of us.

In 2018, Toshiko Kaneda of the Population Research Bureau, calculated that roughly 108 billion people have lived on Earth. She defined “people” as modern Homo sapiens that are thought to have first walked the Earth roughly 50,000 years ago. Billions of births, billions of stories, each with a similar beginning, but wildly varying in content, length, and conclusion. So it goes.

Mother’s Day at our house was a day of this-and-that. The sort of day that frequently occurs when the little ones aren’t so little and parents are left to do whatever it is parents do when their time is mostly their own. It was a calm, sunny morning, a novelty of late, so my wife and I eased ourselves into the day sitting together on the patio, sipping coffee and reading, in the morning sunshine.

Sipping coffee and reading…a now commonplace occurrence that seemed so lavishly foreign just a few years ago. You parents of young kids that still rely on you as their daily entertainment director, for now, your coffee will get cold, and most likely spilt on your unread book. Rest assured, and be warned, that you’ll have plenty of time for those luxuries later.

Until then, Mother’s Day, or any day for that matter, is about you doing what the little tyrants think you would like to do, which just so happens to be exactly what they want to do. The parenthood contract is all fine print, and smudged with grubby little finger prints, so it’s futile to try and decipher any of it, just do your best.

How do you know if you’re doing your best? You only second guess yourself more than half the time, and most nights you don’t really fall asleep as much as you slip fitfully into a dark abyss of self-doubt. That’s doing your best.

For Mother’s Day this year I got my wife a bottle of wine, because my wife is a mother, and wine helps mother’s dislike the father’s that got them into this mother gig a bit less. There are many routes one can take on Mother’s Day, wilted flowers, melted candy, overpriced buffets, maybe even a negligee from you young husbands and fathers that really like to waste money.

Choose wisely…your wife thought she did.

Under the dreaming tree on Mother’s Day

Breezes shift

Branches sway

Birds sing

Shadows dance

Under the dreaming tree on Mother’s Day

Time comes

Memories made

Time goes

Under the dreaming tree on Mother’s Day

Dreams dreamt

Kids play

Under the dreaming tree on Mother’s Day

Love life

Under the dreaming tree on Mother’s Day

Here we go again. Get ready folks, it’s time to start stereotyping and denigrating a new generation of young people. Move over Millennials, pop pseudo-science and the societal scope of scorn, ridicule, and general whining has now been leveled on Generation Z.

Just as fashion and hairstyles find themselves on a twenty- to thirty-year loop, so too does the generational labeling of a group of Homo sapiens who happen to have been born during a certain gap of time. Some fashion and hairstyles are good, and some not-so-good, no matter what timeframe they find themselves in. The same applies to people.

The past few years I’ve noticed that mullets have been trying to rear their ugly heads again, but as a testament to the continual evolution of human intelligence, this time around they haven’t been able to grip the skulls and drape the necks to the epidemic extent accomplished in the 80’s and 90’s.

The little fashion sense I possess, leads me to believe that high-waist jeans and mullets will never take us over completely again. Like the middle-aged guy lingering at the end of the bar in the hip new dance club, they’ll always be on the fringes, waiting and hoping to regain a bit of past glory.

The people sense I have gained during my time in this lovely world, which I hope transcends my fashion sense, leads me to believe that there will always be jerks lingering at the fringes of our day-to-day interpersonal interactions. Jerks of all makes and models, encompassed within and spanning the breadth of each of the arbitrary generational boxes they’ve been put in.

Outliers at the fringes will always exist, but they should not be held up as a representation of the whole. We see what we choose to look at, and believing is often seeing. I believe that the whole of humanity is good. Good and seeking better. Seeking better for themselves, for those they love, and often for those they do not know and may never know. This is what keeps us moving forward.

It’s hard to move forward when you’re stuck in a box. It’s also not nice to stick people in boxes, or so my Grandma told me as she freed my frantic little brother from the cardboard confines I had coaxed him into. Moral of the story for little brothers, when you are assured that the top will remain open, always glance around for a role of packing tape. You’ve been warned.

What is the moral of the story for the Greatest, the Boomers, and the X, Y, and Z generations? Mullets, high-waist pants, and being a jerk are things you will regret, and boxes are small, sweaty, and dark. Sweaty is unavoidable and often desirable in life, but one should resist the stifling closed mindedness of the small, dark banality of the generational box invented to sell books and magazines, generate click-bait, and corral you into a way of being.

A way of being is individual, not generational.

After having to endure several painfully useless meetings at work the past few months, meant to inform us about, and prepare us for, the arrival of Generation Z on campus, I have had enough of this nonsense. I am hereby officially establishing the Generational Differences Denier Organization of People that Happen to Be Human.

Mullets and high-waist pants will be tolerated, but jerks must demonstrate a sincere attempt at redemption.

Nick Linn is a musician I’ve gotten to know here in Rapid City, who plays piano and sings at various bars around town on occasion. The reason I’ve gotten to know Nick is that on most of the occasions he plays, my wife and I generally make a point to go give a listen.

My wife claims I’m his groupie. The word “groupie” seems to imply that there is a group of some sort, so I’m not sure if one person constitutes such? Every proper musician needs a groupie, and I suppose every group has to start somewhere with someone, so a groupie I shall be.

How does a piano man in his 30’s feels about having a man in his 40’s be his groupie? I don’t really care how he feels about it, that’s the sort of stuff musicians have to deal with, not groupies.

In an effort to add more group to his groupies, I asked Nick if he would be willing to come to the campus at Chadron State College, where I work, and put on a concert. Nick agreed, the planning commenced, and I think he successfully acquired a larger following.

The event was relatively well attended by a mix of community members, college faculty and staff, and a few students. When you plan an event on campus, you never know if anyone is going to show up, so I was a bit nervous leading up to it. I didn’t want it to appear as though I coerced him into traveling down to Chadron for my own personal enjoyment.

While we were taking down his audio and visual equipment after the show, we got to chatting about performing in front of people. Specifically, how terrifying it can be, and how despite it going against almost every natural inclination, people still perform. It got me thinking, and what follows is an exploration of Nick’s question, and a cautionary tale regarding the dangers of thinking. Life is simpler as a groupie.

Why are some compelled to willingly, or perhaps begrudgingly, go forth in front of the gaze of the crowd? To vulnerably stand poised, yet humble, look into the breach, and move forward while others remain motionless or recede to their designated places of comfort and safety?

Is it the innate human need to feel competent, the desire to flourish and move towards that which may bring meaning and value to existence? Or is it an act of altruism? A gift to others, intended to inspire action, to convey sentiments of human possibilities, of hope.

To rise up and flourish as an individual for the good of the collective, in the hopes that other individuals will be moved to do the same. A collective composed of flourishing individuals, moving forward from a place of humility with courage, guided by love, curiosity, and wisdom.

Is it an act of selfishness to desire such? Is it naïve, and perhaps a bit delusional, to believe that such is possible? Does the impetus at the helm matter, so long as a better version of the human condition is the aim? Who shall stand and cast that stone? That stone that disrupts the banality of the placid surface, sending ripples of change, of hope, of possibility, infinitely arcing in all directions.

Who shall humbly embody that responsibility? Many have, many will. Will you? Will I? Will we? Someone needs to accept the baton when it is extended, keep it from falling to the ground, keep it moving forward. Keep us moving forward.

Sometimes I think I can just go there, and everything will be the same. That little house with the flat-topped roof or the farm south of town. I think I can just go there and see the people that cared, the people that never asked for much, but gave everything they could. Gave out of love, nothing more, nothing less.

I can go to those places, the places are still there, but those places, although special, are just places. Places in need of people to give it life.

For many years I wondered how abandoned houses found themselves in their lonely state of want. Now I know, and I wish I did not. They find themselves in such a state because life moves on, life moves out, life moves, but they cannot. They must stay and mark the spot, the spot where it began. The spot where the young ventured out, and the old stayed in. Stayed in to await the return of the young, with stories of love and loss, and love again.

For it always seems to begin and end with love. That’s what they showed us. They didn’t have to tell us, we wouldn’t have listened anyway, the young are like that, but what they showed was enough. It was enough to encourage us to move forward, forward when all we wanted to do was stop. Stop and sulk, stop and feel sorry for ourselves, stop and think the world that revolved around us had paused to wait for us to move forward again.

The world does not pause, it does not wait, it moves on…with or without us. We lived with them, they lived with us, we loved as one under that flat-topped roof and that farm south of town. So much has changed, so much time has gone by. Not that much, but enough. So it goes. It goes, but it should not go without saying, because saying is sometimes all we have left. Saying what we remember, saying what we hope to never forget. Just saying.

Things left unsaid are simply left. Left where they lay, never to be picked up by anyone who knows what they meant.

There is much I would give to stand under that flat-topped roof or to walk into that farm south of town and see it all as it once was. To see them all as they once were. But that is not to be. That has been. That is gone. That shall not be again.

Although that makes me sad, I am thankful that it happened, and thankful that I have them with me. Thankful that those memories are mine to touch when I need their touch. When this time, misses that time, I can venture among the places that are not the places they once were.

The little house with a flat-topped roof, the farm south of town, still there when they are needed. In sight, or simply in mind, they are there. We all have these places, we all need these places. Maybe they need us too?

The calendar says that spring is here. Judging by the twinge in my low-back from wielding a snow shovel, Mother Nature, Old Man Winter, Willard Scott…or whomever is responsible, can’t read, or simply doesn’t care what our silly Gregorian calendar and my creaky low-back have to say.

Thankfully, my good friend, Dr. St Patrick, is more reliable than the previously mentioned trio, and made a house call with a prescription strength bottle of magical leprechaun elixir to ease the various twinges and twangs that have bewitched my snow moving muscles. Thanks to the city snowplow, those snow moving muscles got to move some of the same snow twice. So it goes.

I’m not complaining about having our street plowed, there’s enough people in town that relish kicking that dead horse every time it snows. For the record, kicking a dead horse isn’t nice, nor is it an efficient use of a kick.

If I were a snowplow operator, I believe I would take great delight in seeing the expression of the guy drinking coffee on the warm side of the picture window as I left wall of snow between his freshly shoveled driveway and the street. I’d give a little wave and a honk, and use the opportunity to work on my lip reading skills.

Maybe mister snowplow operator is misunderstood, maybe he’s trying to protect me with that wall of snow? Protect us from whoever is trying to get into our yard and take our snow and the half buried garden gnome. Willard Scott dressed as Ronald McDonald perhaps? Never trust a clown, especially one that smells of rancid vegetable oil and finely chopped onion.

Sure, he could just wait for me to get distracted by the hypnotic buzz of the electric foot file grinding away at the mountain of calluses my interpretive dance class has saddled me with, and climb over the wall of snow, but who would ever think of climbing over a wall? Especially in clown shoes.

So, mister snowplow operator thank you. Thank you for protecting my family, our snow, our gnome, and our right to live clown free in the land of the brave. How do I know that mister snowplow operator is in fact a “mister”? I don’t. It is a wild assumption based off of the inordinate amount of knuckle hair on the finger that was waved in my direction when the before mentioned wall of snow was hastily constructed.

The calendar says that spring is here, it says St. Patrick’s day has passed, it says birthdays of loved ones have come and gone. Some of those loved ones have gone as well, but the day we held special for them for so many years will continue to be as such. It was their day then, so it only makes sense that it would remain so now.

Now…while we’re still here with the memory of all that their lives meant to us. Now is a long ways from then, but forward we must go. Spring is here again.

In case you haven’t noticed, it’s still more than a bit wintery outside our windows here in the Dakota’s. Snow is generally tolerable, and a bit lovely when it’s not piled on the business end of your shovel, but these relentlessly frigid temperatures, and outerwear (and underwear) defying wind chills have worn out their welcome.

My bodies been braced against the cold for so long now that it may be August before the tops of my shoulders part ways with the bottom of my ears. I’ve been duped more than once over the past week or so by the bright sunny sky outside our window. Then I walk the dog and find myself thankful for the opportunity to pick up after him when he’s done his duty. In defiance of the tyranny of winter, I shake one mitten clad fist at the deceptively sunny sky, as the little doggie doo bag of fresh heat warms the other.

Sometimes you have to take whatever little victory you can to keep it together. Other than the Labrador hot-pocket, another little victory I’ve grown fond of, is sitting on the floor in the living room in the square of sunlight and warm carpet that the afternoon sun deposits on its way by our picture window as it searches for spring.

As many of you can attest to, sitting on the floor with advanced bodily ricketiness soon leads to lying on the floor, which digresses to napping on the floor, which then leads to waking up 30-minutes later lacking the ability to get up off of the floor. At that point, if you’ve played your cards right, you have an extra, and hopefully unused, doggie doo bag left in your pocket from the previously mentioned dog walk on the frozen tundra, and you can stay right where you’re at.

A quick update from the Institute for the Study of People Past Their “Best By” Date…they have determined that Advanced Bodily Ricketiness (ABR) is an irreversible condition brought on by living and exasperated by not dying. Who are “they”? Don’t ask questions, just trust that “they” know what they’re talking about, because, as you know, that’s what “they” say. Whoever they are.

Lying on the floor, in that lovely little sundrenched square of warm polypropylene fiber shag, I thought about how much time I had spent on the floor playing with my children back when they were “floor age”. Long ago, before they pulled themselves up and got on with all that growing up makes us get on with. So it goes.

My brother Gabe, and his wife Marki, have two rambunctious boys that have a bit of floor age left in them, and I always enjoy mixing it up with them on their level. Rug-burns, Nerf dart welts, Big Foot sightings…never a dull moment at their level. Simple, but never dull…if only that square of sun would stick around a little longer. Maybe it’ll be back tomorrow?

They say spring is coming. They say a lot of things.